Barbara

by Jorgen-Frantz Jacobsen

  But Pastor Poul was seeing red and black. He could already hear Barbara’s screams resounding throughout the town, her glittering falsetto voice falling into a whine and being splintered like a tower of crystal. He was set on violence and vengeance; he grabbed his stick; Gabriel took the bottle, and they both left.

  “You fools,” shouted Suzanne after them, weeping. “You fools.” Little Augustus Gabrielsen Harme woke and also started weeping.

  “China” was a small building where the seamen working for the Royal Store were wont to congregate when they were in Tórshavn. The place did not exactly enjoy a good reputation, less because it was a centre for smuggling than for certain other reasons. Just beside the real “China” there was another, smaller building, a kind of annex overlooking the vegetable garden on the west side of the Reyn. Andreas Heyde had rented this building in order, he said, to be able to study undisturbed. His intentions had apparently also been more or less serious at first, but it soon turned out that the Muses did not thrive well in such close proximity to Bacchus and Venus. But since New Year, Bacchus had been less in favour, and Andreas had led a life that probably looked almost decorous to those who could not see in the dark.

  Pastor Poul and Gabriel fumbled their way from Gongin into the pitch-dark, steep, stepped alleyway known as Klettaskot. They were both possessed by a terrible anger. Pastor Poul was intent on hitting hard. He was going to thrash and beat the gallant, Barbara and whoever else got in his righteous way. Gabriel had more ambitious plans: he wanted to surprise, expose and bring down the devil of a scandal and shame on their sinful undertaking; he was intent on grabbing them and showing them caught in the act, exposing them to public mockery and confronting them as the representative of the law. Nevertheless, he felt that both Pastor Poul and he himself needed to strengthen themselves a little before they set to work. They stopped, drank to each other from the bottle, wished each other all the best and found themselves on quite fraternal terms. A small, narrow flight of steps led down to “China” and the other house. But Gabriel wanted first to reconnoitre and so he proceeded into the kitchen garden behind the house. There he saw there was a light in the living room.

  “Ha, we have them,” he sniggered and tiptoed over to the window.

  The curtain was drawn, but he could peep in through an open strip at the bottom. Pastor Poul was paralysed with fury. He recognised the curtain from Jansegard. Barbara had given it to him to hang at his study window.

  “They are not in bed yet,” whispered Gabriel, pallid with disappointment.

  He turned to Pastor Poul, his face half illuminated by the light from inside. He looked in again: “But he’s not wearing shoes. Perhaps they are getting ready for bed now… wait.”

  And he moved so as better to be able to observe what was going on. But Pastor Poul was not going to wait. He went round the house to the door, and when he found it locked he started hammering it and kicking it and shouting.

  “Open this bloody door!”

  Gabriel was with him in three strides.

  “Stop it for God’s sake,” he hissed. “You’re spoiling it all now. We can’t prove anything now.”

  “I’ll show them! I’ll show them,” screamed Pastor Poul in a completely demented voice.

  He smashed a small window with his stick. But the door withstood his attack.

  “Let me,” said Gabriel, starting to fiddle with the wooden lock with his knife.

  The parson went on kicking. It resounded throughout the neighbourhood, which was deserted now people had settled down for the night. Windows and doors were partly opened and an array of people in shifts, woollen stockings and all kinds of intimate garments, with bare legs in wooden clogs, were standing ready and with teeth chattering behind anything they could hide behind, while dogs barked and cocks flew cackling from their perches. But the core, the very flame behind all this din, was still the parson’s improbable voice swearing and complaining.

  The door suddenly opened. Gabriel had managed to tease the bolt off. Pastor Poul rushed into the dark room and fell over something, but was immediately on his feet again. Gabriel followed, and they both went into the inner room, where a light was burning and found it empty. The window was open, and fleeing footsteps could be heard in the garden. Gabriel took a quick look around and bounced out into the garden. He was like a ball of power, and vegetable and stone crushed and crashed beneath his feet.

  But Pastor Poul was left behind with the scent of Barbara in his nostrils, the well known, sweetly familiar atmosphere of her many little things, her clothes, her movements. Aye, Barbara’s genius was at home here. He recognised one of her skirts, flung over the bed, a pair of her shoes, her small boxes and cases and in the middle of the table the inkwell from Jansegard, his own lovely inkwell that she had given him when he went to live in Vágar! A large quill stood fluttering in it and in front of it lay some paper with writing on it. And now he could also see other things he recognised: music paper, a lute and many of the male, gallant things that had once been extracted from Andreas Heyde’s trunk.

  He stood as though nailed to the spot. He was sweating with horror right to the extremities of his limbs. He supported himself on the table top, gasped for air, groaned, indeed even whimpered now and again.

  “Foxes have holes,” he finally stammered dully and in the voice of one intoxicated. “Foxes have holes.”

  There lay a piece of manuscript before him. He read it through several times without discovering the least meaning in it. “The Faroe Islands,” it said, “are a small group of tiny islands situated some… nautical miles west of the coast of Norway and … miles… from Shetland. Captain… has estimated the northernmost point to be… miles of latitude north and … miles of longitude west, their southernmost point at…”

  Andreas Heyde’s great work on the Faroe Islands, written on the orders of the Royal Exchequer, finished here for the time being. Pastor Poul did not laugh. It merely dawned on him that these lines had been written here in this room in the light of Barbara’s tender presence, and suddenly he took the paper, crumpled it up and threw it on the floor. Then he took hold of the lute, swung it round, went out into the hearth room and smashed it to bits against the edge of the fireplace. The strings sang out, rattled and suddenly fell silent. It was like a murder. Pastor Poul threw the remains of the instrument on the fire and raked the glowing cinders over it. Then he fetched all the sheets of music and set fire to them, and he quickly let Barbara‘s skirt, her sewing box, the curtain, the inkwell follow them.

  Gabriel entered, winded and swearing under his breath. He had abandoned the chase. But Andreas had floundered with one leg in a dunghill. Gabriel sniggered bitterly: he had heard that quite clearly and it was the source of great triumph to him. He was well drunk now. It was some time before he realised what Pastor Poul was up to. But then, suddenly stern, he said: “Stop doing any damage. As an official acting on behalf of His Majesty I can’t agree to that. And you are drunk.”

  And with this, he staggered out. But before going, he put the crumpled manuscript in his pocket. He scarcely realised what he was doing. It was more like a habit. He was fond of having official documents to hand.

  Pastor Poul had wrecked the entire room. His eyes were dim and witless; his lower jaw hung down. He was carrying large bundles of bedstraw out to the chimney; fevered and sweating he went about in the red light from the fire like a harvester, harvesting the hay from the bed of indignation.

  “Foxes have holes…”

  The neighbours watched in horror to see the sparks gushing and pouring out of China’s chimney. The crowd grew bigger and bigger, but no one dared to go in to the madman who was smashing chairs and benches and throwing them on to the fire.

  “Foxes have holes.”

  Then the watch came. That was Niels the Watchman, the Beach Flea, Ole Eighteen, Rebekka’s Poul and the Hobbler, all carrying maces and sabres, but otherwise wearing wooden clogs or ragged bootees and not very militaristic to behold. But they were
all upholders of the law, and they rattled their weapons as they went down the narrow steps to China. They were a little embarrassed to find the pastor from Vágar to be the incendiary, but Niels the Watchman was a man who precisely knew his duty. Nor did the soldiers encounter any opposition from the poor troubled priest. He went with them without causing any bother.

  “Foxes have holes…” he croaked as he tumbled down into the black cellar of the Corps de Gardes.

  Nul ne mérite

  “Let me,” said Barbara. “I can reach a lot further down.”

  And so she did; her arms could be seen bare and flickering white through the swirling sea water. She had a knife in one hand and with it loosened a sea snail shell that was firmly fixed on the steeply sloping rock. The shell slowly rolled down through the water into her other hand.

  “There you are,” she said, drawing her wet arms out of the water. Her face was hot and breathless, but her hands were red and a little numb from the water.

  “You’re a water nymph,” said Andreas. “An oceanide.”

  They both lay on the black rocks at the water’s edge catching sea snails. They were going to use them as bait, for on these summer evenings they would often sit with a fishing rod and catch Norway haddock and coalfish to boil or fry.

  “No, you’d better let me,” said Barbara again, eagerly reaching down into the water. “You can’t do it because of your sleeves.”

  She examined the rock deep beneath the surface, and the leaves of the seaweed wrapped around her arms. Her hair had fallen down over her forehead. She peeped up through the wisps now and again and blew them away.

  Andreas sat listening to the grotto-like sound of the sea each time it rose squelching and clucking among the rocks. Barbara’s short sleeves were wet, but she paid no attention to them. She worked in the green depths, her back tense with excitement, and when she looked up from the darkness her eyes had the same sheen as the water.

  “Yes, she’s a Nereid,” thought Andreas. He had seen paintings of Nereids sitting on rocks and skerries, splashing in the waves with their white bodies and with a sea green light in their eyes. But here and there their bodies were red and as it were numbed by the great watery element into whose embrace they surrendered.

  He sat there and was a little confused as always when Barbara was renewed in his imagination. Ah, here, suddenly, he saw her as part of nature, part of the great natural world. And truth to tell, he needed that. By now he was only too familiar with her in bed.

  It had been a long winter. Not that it had been a boring winter for them; on the contrary. It had been a winter full of adventures and escapades and secret rendezvous such as not a soul could dream of in a half subterranean hole like Tórshavn. Especially while China was uninhabitable and they had not had any permanent lodgings to share, they had lived a life after his own heart. But now it was summer, and his heart had turned towards the natural world, tired of darkness and of caresses that were too genuine.

  But look at Barbara, how cheerfully she transformed herself into a daughter of nature. She had given him sweet kisses and with the same gracefulness she would give him salt kisses and caress him with a wet, numbed hand. She would embrace him in the scent of seaweed and the raw substance of mussels and leave him behind blissful and with fish scales in his hair and clothes. Aye, she was an oceanide. He would make love to her somewhere on this rocky coast.

  They walked far along the desolate shore that day and in their great delight and self-oblivion they allowed nothing natural to remain secret from the naked rocks on which they sat and from the playful, capricious sea breeze.

  But afterwards, when he opened his eyes and saw the shore again, and the fjord and the long, curving ridge of Nolsoy, Andreas was overcome by a strange mood that he failed properly to understand. Damn it all, he was not usually a man who regretted an undertaking successfully completed. Nor did he see anything other than that he had acted in accordance with nature. But as he observed the evening sunshine on the tiny houses on Nolsoy’s familiar isthmus and the vast surface of the fjord stretching like a floor from his feet, he felt that it was after all something different he had sought in these natural surroundings of his homeland. What the hell, it was not at all Barbara he had wanted. It was nature itself he had wanted. That was what he had come to this country to investigate and to describe in a splendid and useful account. And here he had not merely wasted a valuable working winter on vain pleasures, but now, as nature was opening up again he dragged his amorous frippery out on the shore and fished for Norway haddock while other men rowed out to sea or went off into the mountains.

  As they were walking home, they saw a ship in the offing. It was the Fortuna on the first visit of the year from Copenhagen, and Barbara involuntarily caught hold of Andreas’ arm.

  “Are you in a bad mood, Andreas?” she asked quietly.

  “No, my love,” he replied.

  But later, after they had passed the Redoubt and could see the town, Tinganes and the Hoist, where people had begun to congregate, she said in a troubled voice, “I’m just thinking that you will be leaving one day.”

  “Don’t think about that now. That’s a long time away. You know perfectly well how little progress I’ve made on my work. And besides,” he added with a laugh, “I’ll take you with me, my love.”

  Barbara started and a great radiance came into her eyes, but she immediately became deadly serious and in a voice that almost expressed fear asked, “Do you mean that, Andreas?”

  “Of course I mean it.”

  He attempted to laugh, but could not quite bring himself to do so.

  “I really do mean it, seriously,” he said in a strong voice. “Of course. Of course.”

  Barbara still remained serious for a time, but then she suddenly brightened up.

  “There’s nothing I want more in the world. Copenhagen. And Poul, you know… he will probably… probably… have the marriage annulled, and then I shall be free, completely free. I’ve always simply longed to get away from here. Don’t you think… don’t you think I could come to Copenhagen?”

  She was inspired, she was glowing with an incredible idea, and she almost danced over the rocky ground of Kragesten.

  The peat smoke from all Tórshavn’s supper pots was rising straight up in the air in the low evening sunshine, and the turf roofs of the town were shaded dark green in the golden haze. Voices could be heard from the Hoist, and the Fortuna’s anchor splashed down into the silent waters.

  “Aye, if Barbara left the country,” thought Andreas, “I would settle here.”

  But Barbara was dancing enthusiastically in front of him like a large, black shadow straight in line with the red sun.

  When Andreas visited his uncle a couple of days later, Johan Hendrik suddenly said to him: “Well, Andreas, I suppose you are not thinking of going back to Denmark? What is the situation, actually? I suppose the Exchequer has not laid down any limit to your time?”

  “No,” said Andreas hesitantly. “All the resolution says is that I should do it. It says nothing about when.”

  “Hmm, that’s not so good. But for that matter I suppose they don’t hurry about things down in the Exchequer. But…”

  “I don’t think that’s a bad thing. For to be perfectly honest, the work is not progressing very quickly… not as quickly as I had imagined.”

  The judge walked around the room, rubbed his thigh, whistled through half-closed lips, drummed a little on the table and was very pensive.

  “You could leave on the Fortuna now,” he exclaimed suddenly.

  “Now!” shouted Andreas.

  “Yes. Have you anything against that?” Johan Hendrik gave a wry smile.

  “Before I’m finished? I’d better tell you the truth, uncle. I know you are not so harsh in your judgement as other people are. Well… it is shameful to have to admit it, but I have hardly made a start yet.”

  Looking away, he added: “That’s to say I had started. But all that work was destroyed by… that par
son from Vágar.”

  The judge’s smile twisted into a decidedly satirical grimace. He rubbed his thigh very energetically and then suddenly sat down.

  “Tell me, Andreas. Suppose you were finished with your relationship and everything was otherwise as it is now. Would you then look favourably on the idea of leaving?”

  Andreas hesitated a moment. His careless self-assurance had quite deserted him, and his big blue eyes adopted a hesitant look. It might seem he had been caught in a trap. But all at once he drew himself up.

  “Well,” he said. “I honestly do not know whether you will completely approve of my answer, but there is no point in putting on an act for you. If I could leave, I would have been delighted to do so. But I see no way out of all this. For either I must leave having achieved nothing, and I cannot do that. Or otherwise I must first achieve something, and I cannot do that either… at least not as long as Barbara…”

  “But perhaps you might consider leaving her?”

  “It would be difficult, but…! I had thought she was more capricious…”

  “Ha ha ha ha!” The judge filled his nostrils with snuff, and his face was distorted with a sense of amusement. “Capricious? Ha! You are a couple of young fools. You are each as capricious as the other. You simply cannot be capricious at the same time. Can you not understand that? When you are capricious, she is not. And when she is capricious, you are not. I thought you realised that, damn it. How old are you? Twenty-three?”

  The judge suddenly grew very serious: “And she is twenty-nine… twenty-nine. Aye. If she were sensible…! But she is not. No, she is not.”

  He put his hand to his chin and started considering. “Fundamentally… fundamentally, Barbara is in various respects… not particularly bright.”

  He sneezed and pulled a face. “God preserve us from whatever else might have happened if she had been.”

  He paced up and down the floor, suddenly stopped and said: “Suppose she had been able to think!… She would have been awful, wouldn’t she Andreas?”